Kevin Brennan

In this video, I provide an overview of the Google UX Design Professional Certificate, which I recently completed.

The program is primarily targeting people interested in UX as a career. It’s includes foundational training in core UX and user-centered design principles, processes, and tools to someone with no background in UX design. That said, the material has high relevance to anyone currently working in, or trying to break into, the broad area of high-tech product design and development, including product managers, engineers, and program managers.

In the video I provide a summary of the course, including who the course is for, how long it takes and how much it costs, and an overview of the course content.

I explain the core material through a project from course where I go through the full design process from start to finish to design a mobile app.

By the end of the video, you’ll have a good understanding of the course and you’ll be able to decide if it’s something that’s relevant for you.

Read more about other key product management topics in my book, Mastering Product Management: A Step-By-Step Guide, available in paperback and eBook.

Onboarding is the process of integrating a new employee into the team and providing them with the information, tools, and training they need to be successful in the new role. Most companies have an established process for employee onboarding. This article covers the most important steps.

Create an onboarding plan

Document what the employee will do over three time periods: the first week, the first month, and the first quarter. Often, the new employee will shadow the manager and team members to observe how key aspects of the job are done. The new employee can take on smaller tasks at first and build up to more complicated assignments and autonomy during the first 90 days. Consider these areas in the onboarding plan:

Onboarding logistics:

• Completing the new employee orientation.
• Reviewing company-level material such as the employee handbook.
• Accessing key company IT systems and tools.
• Touring the building and location.
• Sending a hiring announcement to the organization.

People:

• Understanding the team, business unit, and company organization.
• Meeting key stakeholders, including the immediate team, the product team, the management team, and other key stakeholders, including Sales, Marketing, Legal, Finance, and Operations. This should be done within the first 90 days.
• Attending key meetings, including team meetings, divisional or business unit team meetings, and project team meetings.

Product:

• Training on the product line and individual products, including technical training and training on the product strategy, the market, and the competitive landscape.
• Training on the new product process.

Goals

• Other specific goals for the first 90 days.

Assign an onboarding partner

An onboarding partner is someone other than the hiring manager who assists the new employee with onboarding. The onboarding partner should be a seasoned employee who can help the new employee in an informal, friendly way with day-to-day items that occur, such as where to get lunch or where to find office supplies.

Prepare for the new employee’s first day

Contact the employee before their start date to welcome them and discuss logistics, including orientation and where and when to meet on their first day. Ensure the employee’s workspace is set up and ready and that all equipment (computer, phone, etc.) and accounts (email, etc.) are prepared.

Begin the onboarding

Meet the new employee and review the onboarding plan. Discuss and plan how often you will meet during the first month, first 90 days, and after that. Discuss your management and working style with the employee, including communication preferences. Plan an event to socialize the new employee with the team. Have the employee work through the onboarding plan and review the plan frequently together to discuss what has been completed, where there are obstacles the manager can help with and any additions or modifications required to the plan.

Read more about onboarding product managers and other key product management topics in my book, Mastering Product Management: A Step-By-Step Guide, available in paperback and eBook.

Sales Enablement is the product information, assets, tools, and processes used to empower the Sales organization to sell the product. A great Sales Enablement process and package will help unlock the full market potential for your product. A poorly thought-out Sales Enablement strategy will limit the product’s impact and overly involve the Product Manager in the sales process. Here’s a few key steps to keep in mind when defining and building Sales Enablement for a new product.

Understand the sales process for your product

Work with the Sales organization to understand the different stages of the sales pipeline and what is needed to successfully engage at each stage. A generic sales pipeline has prospects, leads, and customers. Consider what it takes to engage prospects and turn them into leads and likewise, what it takes to convert leads into customers and then drive repeat purchase. When doing this, have a “buyer perspective”: Think about what the buyer needs to move through the sales pipeline. Visit buyers of prior versions of the product to understand why they bought and what influenced their purchase decision. Buy your own product and your competitors’ products.

Review Sales Enablement for existing products

Review the Sales Enablement for existing products and discuss what has worked well and what could be improved with the Sales organization.

Define and deliver the Sales Enablement before product launch

Given the insight gathered on the sales pipeline process, define and deliver the optimal Sales Enablement. Typically, the Sales and Marketing organization owns Sales Enablement, but the Product Manager is a key stakeholder in the definition and delivery process. A key consideration is how Sales Enablement assets and collateral will be stored and made available to the Sales team. If the Sales team cannot easily find a piece of collateral or know whether it’s the latest version, they will inundate the Product Manager with requests. Items to consider as part of Sales Enablement include:

• Training on the product and the support process
• Qualification criteria to determine if a prospect is a good target
• Product presentations
• Technical whitepapers
• Sales scripts
• Social media messages
• Product demos and demo scripts
• Customer success case studies
• Competitor comparisons and competitor selling collateral
• Overcoming common barriers to adoption
• Pricing and information on justifying the price

Monitor usage of Sales Enablement throughout the product life cycle

It’s important to ensure that Sales Enablement is effective. Ideally, the use of each piece of collateral is measured and reviewed. If an item is underutilized, the Product Manager should work with the Sales and Marketing organization to understand why and to make any necessary changes. Likewise, the Product Manager should periodically enquire about gaps in the Sales Enablement and bridge those gaps with new enablement assets and processes. Monitoring of the Sales Enablement is particularly important immediately after launch, so issues and gaps can be identified and addressed early in the product life cycle.

It’s never too early or too late to think about Sales Enablement. If sales of your existing products are coming in below expectation, see if better Sales Enablement could help. Building Sales Enablement into the new product plan early on will give you the time needed to ensure the Sales organization is properly supported with good Sales Enablement by the time the product is launched, and the Sales team are ready to sell.

Read more about sales enablement and other key product management topics in my book, Mastering Product Management: A Step-By-Step Guide, available in paperback and eBook.

Wagile is an approach to new product development that draws on the best of traditional and more contemporary new product development processes. The word comes from a combination of the “W” from Waterfall and “Agile.” I recently spoke to Teresa Jurgens-Kowal, an expert on innovation and new product development and an authority on Wagile.

Wagile takes the benefits of a traditional phased approach to innovation with definitive checkpoints or gates as well as a definition of what “done” means and combines it with the benefits of iterative design and learning within phases that is a key part of Agile. A key philosophical underpinning of Wagile is a focus first and foremost on the customer, to the point where one of the key roles in the process is a Customer Representative.

In my conversation with Teresa, we touch on the defining characteristics of Wagile, the four key roles of a Wagile team, some of the key tools used in Wagile, and the overall benefits of this approach to new product development. You can listen to the full interview here:

Teresa does regular training sessions on Wagile, and has written a number of blog posts. Details can be found at: https://globalnpsolutions.com/. Teresa has published a number of books and her latest book, The Innovation Answer Book, is available at Amazon and other publishers.

Read more about new product development processes in my book, Mastering Product Management: A Step-By-Step Guide, available in paperback and eBook.

The “Project Management Triangle” is a common framework for managing the key constraints of a new product project. The model holds that the overall quality of a product is dependent on the product scope (features), schedule, and cost. To maintain the same level of quality, a change in one of the three requires a change in one or both of the other constraints. For example, if the schedule becomes compressed, then the cost or scope needs to be modified to maintain the same level of overall quality.

In a typical project, a baseline plan is created by estimating how long it will take to complete key workstreams given the product scope, determining dependencies across work items, and given the resources available to the team. The baseline is an estimate since, very often, product scope is somewhat fluid at the beginning of a project, and there’s similar uncertainty in resource availability.

It’s usually the case that there is much more to do than there is time and resources to do it. However, very often, the team is operating with a fixed schedule or overall time constraint. The schedule might be driven by a launch partner’s schedule (for example, Apple has consistently launched new iPhones in September or October since 2011) or an event (for example, if the product is to be launched at a trade show such as the Consumer Electronics Show in January each year).

The product scope includes all the features and functions that make up the product or service. If the schedule is fixed, it’s prudent to build scope flexibility into the product plan from the get-go. Fundamentally, this involves prioritizing the features and ensuring understanding and alignment between the scope owner, usually the Product Manager, and the team developing and testing the scope. There are many frameworks for prioritizing scope, for example:

• Dividing features into “Must Have” and “Nice to Have” groups. A more sophisticated version of this approach is the MoSCoW method: Diving features into Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have buckets.
• MVP: Identifying the “Minimum Viable Product,” i.e., the minimum feature set that must be developed in order to launch.

The goal here is to identify what absolutely must be developed for the product to meet the minimum needs of the customer and be viable in the market. Without this scope, it would be better not to release the product. Identifying the Must Have scope allows the development team to optimize their efforts in service of those features. Once the Must Have features are complete, the team can then work through the prioritized list of Nice to Have features in the remaining time.

For B2B products, the prioritization of product scope is best done through consultation with key target customers. Having a dialogue around what is Must Have and what is Nice to Have with customers ensures the product will be successfully received in the market and allows for a conversation around what might need to be delivered in a future version of the product and enables the customer to plan accordingly.

As you plan for and work through new product development, ensure that you and the team have a clear shared understanding of which features must be developed and continue to test and refine that when meeting customers. This will set you up for success when having to deal with the inevitable changes that occur during the project.

Read more about product scope and other key product management topics in my book, Mastering Product Management: A Step-By-Step Guide, available in paperback and eBook.